Concepts - Some guiding beliefs behind romanticism are emotion and individuality, as opposed to the stifling rationalization and logic ideals brought about during the Enlightenment. The philosophies of being one with nature and accepting of one’s feelings were huge during this period. Being imaginative was praised, as was childhood and learning from the past. Myths and folklore were highly regarded, as was expression through poetry.
Definition (text book) - People of the Romanticism looked at life as they wanted it to be, instead of how it actually truly was.
Works:The Pioneers, The Pilot,The Last of the Mohicans,The Prairie,The Red Rover,The Bravo,The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer,The Two Admirals, and Satanstoe
Walter, Whitman (1819-1892)
Works:Leaves of Grass
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)
Works: "Nature: Addresses and Lectures," "Essays: First and Second Series," "Representative Men," "English Traits," "Self-Reliance," "Naure," "American Scholar," and "The Conduct of Life"
Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)
Works: "Walden," "The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau," "Miscellanies," "Autumn," "Winter," "Summer," "Early Spring in Massachusetts," "Cape Cod," "The Maine Woods," "Life Without Principle," "Excursions," "A Plea for Captain John Brown," and "Civil Disobedience"
Irving, Washington (1783-1859)
Works: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Wrinkle," "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon," "The Devil and Tom Walker," "Bracebridge Hall," "History of New York," and "Life of Washington"
Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)
Works: wrote hundreds of poems including “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Heart, we will forget him!”, “I'm Nobody! Who are You?”, and “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”
Fuller, Margaret (1810-1850)
Works:Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Melville, Herman (1819-1891)
Works: "Moby Dick," "Typee," "Omoo," "Mardi," "Redbum," "Whitejacket," "The Encantadas," "Isreal Potter:His fifty years of Exile," "The Confidence Man," and "Battle Pieces and Aspects of War"
Time Period - Between Emerson’s Nature and the Civil War American literary supremacy peaked. It is such an extraordinary event that it remains the center for all discussion of American literature. This period began with Emerson’s Nature and faded with the American Civil War in 1861. The freedom and independence of the individual goes hand in hand with the West’s capitalistic morals. After the liberation of the American Colonies, Romanticism started in Europe. Influences from utopianism and German religion were used to exemplify mankind can be seen in the Declaration of Independence. Throughout the 1840s, Emerson’s motivation caused a rage to grow. When Alexis de Tocqueville recorded his impressions of America in the 1830s, he found Boston considered itself "the Hub of the Universe." During the 1830s, Boston Literature was American Literature. It had key women writers, of whom Margaret Fuller and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and many lively records of New England life. Form here, there were voices of new religion and radical reform, the early abolitionists, and there were the transcendentalists.
Characterisics -
Romanticism is characterized by the way it moved the focus of artists and authors from the general ideals of the society to the thoughts of the individual. This is the prime characteristic of romanticism because it forever revolutionized how people would think of things and look at them. Romanticism can also be characterized by a focus on imagination, nature, and symbolism. Romanticists often connected the ideas of imagination and nature through means of symbolism. These original and unique methods of expression were a contrast to neoclassicism and characterized what became known as the Romanticism Movement.
"Characteristics of the romantic movement in American literature are sentimentalism, primitivism and the cult of the noble savage; political liberalism; the celebration of natural beauty and the simple life; introspection; the idealization of the common man, uncorrupted by civilization; interest in the picturesque past; interest in remote places; antiquarianism; individualism; morbid melancholy; and historical romance." **http://classiclit.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=classiclit&cdn=education&tm=67&gps=84_373_1020_566&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.honors.uiuc.edu/eng255/lectures/12-13.html__//** Romanticism Style Paintings
Cropsey: Autumn on the Hudson River
Thomas Cole: Old Age Thomas Cole: Manhood
Thomas Cole: Youth
*These art works invoke emtion from the viewer, which is essential to the Romantic style
Quotes On American Romanticism
If "Romanticism" involves
a story of breaking barriers or crossing boundaries,
idealization of unattainable purity,
gothic mingling of love and death,
the tortured vanity of the family romance,
the gorgeous outrage of free verse,
the terror and beauty of the sublime,
the yearning for the long ago and far away but never the here and now
—so does "America."---(Zora Neale Hurston, 1891-1960)
If "America" is a cluster of attitudes involving
desire for a better future,
nostalgia for a lost past,
impatience with inherited forms,
anxiety from relentless change,
conflicted disdain for industrial (& virtual) society,
sentimentality for nature and youth,
and the domination of all by the individual
—so is "Romanticism." ---(Walt Whitman, 1819-1892)
Copy of Emerson's: Nature
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.
Concepts - Some guiding beliefs behind romanticism are emotion and individuality, as opposed to the stifling rationalization and logic ideals brought about during the Enlightenment. The philosophies of being one with nature and accepting of one’s feelings were huge during this period. Being imaginative was praised, as was childhood and learning from the past. Myths and folklore were highly regarded, as was expression through poetry.
Definition (text book) - People of the Romanticism looked at life as they wanted it to be, instead of how it actually truly was.
Definition (online) - Reaction against logic and reason; there was a generalized suspicion of science
http://classiclit.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=classiclit&cdn=education&tm=67&gps=84_373_1020_566&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3Awww.honors.uiuc.edu/eng255/lectures/12-13.html
Literature//
COOPER, JAMES FENIMORE (1789-1851)
Works: The Pioneers, The Pilot, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie, The Red Rover, The Bravo, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer, The Two Admirals, and Satanstoe
Walter, Whitman (1819-1892)
Works: Leaves of Grass
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)
Works: "Nature: Addresses and Lectures," "Essays: First and Second Series," "Representative Men," "English Traits," "Self-Reliance," "Naure," "American Scholar," and "The Conduct of Life"
Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862)
Works: "Walden," "The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau," "Miscellanies," "Autumn," "Winter," "Summer," "Early Spring in Massachusetts," "Cape Cod," "The Maine Woods," "Life Without Principle," "Excursions," "A Plea for Captain John Brown," and "Civil Disobedience"
Irving, Washington (1783-1859)
Works: "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Wrinkle," "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon," "The Devil and Tom Walker," "Bracebridge Hall," "History of New York," and "Life of Washington"
Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)
Works: wrote hundreds of poems including “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Heart, we will forget him!”, “I'm Nobody! Who are You?”, and “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”
Fuller, Margaret (1810-1850)
Works: Woman in the Nineteenth Century
Melville, Herman (1819-1891)
Works: "Moby Dick," "Typee," "Omoo," "Mardi," "Redbum," "Whitejacket," "The Encantadas," "Isreal Potter:His fifty years of Exile," "The Confidence Man," and "Battle Pieces and Aspects of War"
Time Period - Between Emerson’s Nature and the Civil War American literary supremacy peaked. It is such an extraordinary event that it remains the center for all discussion of American literature. This period began with Emerson’s Nature and faded with the American Civil War in 1861. The freedom and independence of the individual goes hand in hand with the West’s capitalistic morals. After the liberation of the American Colonies, Romanticism started in Europe. Influences from utopianism and German religion were used to exemplify mankind can be seen in the Declaration of Independence. Throughout the 1840s, Emerson’s motivation caused a rage to grow. When Alexis de Tocqueville recorded his impressions of America in the 1830s, he found Boston considered itself "the Hub of the Universe." During the 1830s, Boston Literature was American Literature. It had key women writers, of whom Margaret Fuller and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and many lively records of New England life. Form here, there were voices of new religion and radical reform, the early abolitionists, and there were the transcendentalists.
Characterisics -
Romanticism is characterized by the way it moved the focus of artists and authors from the general ideals of the society to the thoughts of the individual. This is the prime characteristic of romanticism because it forever revolutionized how people would think of things and look at them. Romanticism can also be characterized by a focus on imagination, nature, and symbolism. Romanticists often connected the ideas of imagination and nature through means of symbolism. These original and unique methods of expression were a contrast to neoclassicism and characterized what became known as the Romanticism Movement.
"Characteristics of the romantic movement in American literature are sentimentalism, primitivism and the cult of the noble savage; political liberalism; the celebration of natural beauty and the simple life; introspection; the idealization of the common man, uncorrupted by civilization; interest in the picturesque past; interest in remote places; antiquarianism; individualism; morbid melancholy; and historical romance."
**http://classiclit.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=classiclit&cdn=education&tm=67&gps=84_373_1020_566&f=00&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.honors.uiuc.edu/eng255/lectures/12-13.html__//**
Romanticism Style Paintings
Cropsey: Autumn on the Hudson River
Thomas Cole: Old Age
Thomas Cole: Manhood
Thomas Cole: Youth
*These art works invoke emtion from the viewer, which is essential to the Romantic style
Quotes On American Romanticism
If "Romanticism" involves
a story of breaking barriers or crossing boundaries,
idealization of unattainable purity,
gothic mingling of love and death,
the tortured vanity of the family romance,
the gorgeous outrage of free verse,
the terror and beauty of the sublime,
the yearning for the long ago and far away but never the here and now
—so does "America."---(Zora Neale Hurston, 1891-1960)
desire for a better future,
nostalgia for a lost past,
impatience with inherited forms,
anxiety from relentless change,
conflicted disdain for industrial (& virtual) society,
sentimentality for nature and youth,
and the domination of all by the individual
—so is "Romanticism." ---(Walt Whitman, 1819-1892)
Copy of Emerson's: Nature
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.
Links
http://classes.berklee.edu/llanday/fall01/tech/romanticism.htm - Overview of Ramnticism
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook15.html - Many examples of Romanticism
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/romanticism.html - Time line and art